Which was the Style at the time…

Getting Tricky with Words

Would have been a fine thing. To get a shot of me face as I watched my old friend shattering on the roadside.

It hung in for a few k’s. I heard a bump and a rattle as I pulled into the bottle-shop but wrote it off as a tick of the car. Maybe the suspension was shot. I was heading back to camp along a dry wooded backroad. Fast. When I caught a glimpse of something black spinning through the air. The light catching it.

I thought I’d hit a crow. It’s greasy feathers shimmerin in the light. But nah. When it collided with the tar for a second time familiar parts flew from it.

Lens cap. Lens Hood. Battery. Flip out screen.

I found them all scattered in a line when I got back to the scene. I followed and collected the fragments that led to the brush. Tramping through the long grass in arcs I finally found it. 20 meters from the road. The Camera body. Lens covered in dirt. Cracks on the body. The rear menu screen was a flip out. Shattered now. The back casing had flown off onto the road.

I turned it on and took a shot.

It still focussed. It still seemed to go.

So I got back to camp, drank my drinks and went walking. Taking pics with the cam. Not sure how they would go.

Far up the beach was a man too well dressed to be on the beach reading a book. I talked shit to him for a while and really tested his geniality. He’d come so far out of his way for solitude to have a pished blood-eyed cankersore of a man poring all over his cool Russian literature and snapping photos of him with a busted ass camera to boot.

Upswing: The camera still goes after all the shit I’ve put it though. Man. The Nikon D5100 is a tough SOB. Totally obsolete tech but still. Tough. And still takes a nice pic if you’re in the right space, at the right time, 95% of the time. Isn’t that the game we play people! Right right right?